This man went from university graduate to hawker to startup founder

As a hawker selling Bak Kut Teh (pork rib broth) for six months, Tan Jun Yuan noticed an issue facing F&B merchants: food wastage.

“There would be days with a lot of food left. But I don’t want to run promos every day, where you often see people holding their food at F&B outlets waiting for the clock to strike a certain time,” said the 30-year-old.

To solve this problem, Jun Yuan created 11th Hour, an app where F&B merchants can run last-minute promos. Users open the app to see promos near them and can also “follow” merchants.

Bootstrapped startup 11th Hour hopes to curb food wastage by allowing merchants to list last-minute promotions.

With 200 merchants and about 7,000 registered users, there are easily 100 promos a day, according to Jun Yuan, who is one of the three co-founders.

Some of the app’s enrolled merchants include The Black Sheep Café at Upper Thomson and gelato shop Milkissimo.

The app, which took two and a half years to develop due to team restructuring, has earned US$2,400 in revenue since launching one and a half months ago. The team also aims to have 500 merchants on board by June 2017.

First taste of entrepreneurship

While 11th Hour was launched only recently, Jun Yuan had already started his first business in 2011, while waiting to graduate from university.

Together with a friend, Jun Yuan started an “Ultimate Sales Challenge,” where participants compete to sell the most products provided by a sponsor. The pair would then take a cut from the sales, profiting US$5,000 across three months.

Transition to hawker life

Graduating with first-class honors, the business graduate from the University of Manchester at the Singapore Institute of Management then worked for National Auxiliary Police Force Certis CISCO. He worked there as a management associate before leaving after five months to join Singapore firm Trek 2000 – original inventor and patent owner of the ThumbDrive – as a product manager.

There, he met CEO Henn Tan, whose entrepreneurial spirit inspired Jun Yuan to start his own business.

The son of a taxi driver and a homemaker, Jun Yuan thought about his ‘secret sauce’ and realized it was his mom’s Bak Kut Teh recipe.

Tan Jun Yuan, 30, co-founder of 11th Hour.

“Entrepreneurship is in my blood.”